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MATTHEW 6:11
(Readings: Exod.16; Luk.12:22-34; Matt.6: 9-11)
When the Hotline Is the Breadline!
Congregation in our Lord Jesus Christ…
We’re still learning to pray this prayer of the Master.
More than children around a story-teller, or students hearing a famous speaker, aren’t we eagerly listening with our ears and our minds and our hearts, because we want the way to truly pray?
We do desire so much to be with the Lord.
The way Jesus has begun this model for prayer has lifted us up so high spiritually.
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.”
There is God and his glory!
We’re looking up.
The King and his Kingdom takes priority over people and their needs.
His perspective, his process, and his presence have filled our talking with him in prayer so far.
But, then, to pray for bread?
To ask something just for our physical bodies?
It is like the contrast the Italian doctor Mantegazza painted about marriage:
“To drink from the eyes of a woman who is a perfect fountain of delight, to feel the doors of paradise opened to us by her lips; and then all at once to be obliged to speak of income amidst such intoxicating pleasures; it is hard, cruel, abominable - but it is necessary!”
Do you see it?
Income and bread are one and the same.
They are what we physically need.
Perhaps some would think, that, having begun with God himself and the heavenly side of things, it’s our spiritual needs which would have to be first.
Thinking about it, though, isn’t the most amazing thing that we’re actually alive at all!
The simple fact of being able to be here must be the most necessary thing.
It’s really no surprise that Jesus begins here with what we ask for our physical selves.
But I wonder, congregation, do we in the 21st Century western world really know what it is to pray this?
In Proverbs 30, verses 8 and 9, a man called Agur asks of the Lord, “give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.
“Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’
“Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonour the name of my God.”
Now, I don’t think that last possibility is really our problem - is it?
But having so much could it be that we are becoming as spiritually naive as Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, was materially naive toward the peasants at the time just before the French Revolution?
When she was told about the many poor who had no bread, she replied, “Then let them eat cake!”
She just had no idea of being on the breadline.
And I wonder if the western church isn’t experiencing a similar condition now!
Do we really know what it is to starve?
Are we aware of … THE BLESSING WE HAVE WITH OUR FOOD TODAY?
This is the first point to our sermon … THE BLESSING WE HAVE WITH OUR FOOD TODAY.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
That’s what we pray - isn’t it?
Do we?
Perhaps there’s a hurried prayer - or grace as some call it - before the dinner.
What was on your heart - though?
Do we realise we’re asking for something that’s completely up to God to give?
We haven’t earned it.
If God willed it, we might not have that food.
He could whip up the earth’s climate with such a thing like El Nino, and hold back the rain.
Or if a crop did grow he could whither it to nothing if he so planned it.
We can’t live without God!
Our times, our lives - they’re all in his hands!
In fact, so much is everything in God’s hands that he knows absolutely every tiny detail!
Jesus tells us that a sparrow falling to the ground is known to his Father.
Not even a hair can fall from our heads without God noticing!
The smallest and most insignificant detail in my little life is known by the One on the everlasting throne!
It’s interesting, in this connection, that the Greek word translated as “daily” in the text, is an extremely rare word.
So rare is it, because it only appears in the Lord’s Prayer, that one scholar even thought Matthew made the word up himself.
You see, this word for a long time wasn’t found in any other ancient literature.
That is, until it turned up in modern time on a discovered papyrus fragment.
This papyrus had exactly the same word.
A papyrus which was actually a woman’s shopping list!
On that list, next to a particular item, was this word.
It was a note to remind her to buy supplies of a certain food for the coming day.
In other words, this means, “Give me the things we need for this coming day.
“Help me to get the things I’ve got on my shopping list when I go out this morning.
“Give me the things we need to eat when the children come home from school, and when the adults come home from work.
“Grant that the table won’t be bare when we sit down together today.”
It is the simple prayer that God will give us what we need for the coming day.
So, although it may seem the greatest difference in the world to go from praying “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” to “Give us this day our daily bread,” it is still the way of the LORD.
The same God who though so high and lofty and living in eternity, the One who is called ‘holy’, is also the One, who, as Isaiah 57:15 tells us, lives with him who is “contrite and lowly in spirit.”
Congregation, this God is the One God who is concerned about us!
The whole point of Jesus Christ coming to earth is so that this very prayer may be prayed believing it will happen!
In the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, we are trusting in God alone Q & A 125).
This is … THE BLESSING WE HAVE WITH OUR FOOD TODAY.
Imagine what blessing would flow!
To actually draw in each time we eat what a privilege and gift of God that that food is - doesn’t that make us thankful?
And wouldn’t that thankfulness draw out of our hearts a growing appreciation for God and all His goodness?
For then we’re feeding on something more than just physical food.
Its benefit will be more than healthy bodies.
In the words of Charles Spurgeon, “A man is made by what he feeds upon, and for the best manhood you need the best food.”
You only need to look at what all those athletes were eating or not eating at the Olympic Games to realise this.
Their diets were specially prepared to make vital differences to their performances.
You are what you eat!
As Spurgeon illustrates it: “As certain silkworms have their silk coloured by the leaves on which they feed, so if we were to feed on Christ, and nothing else but Christ, we should become pure, holy, lowly, meek, gentle, humble; in a word, we should be perfect even as He is.”
But this brings us into much more than our daily food.
And do it is!
This request in the Lord’s Prayer is also about … THE BLESSINGS WHICH COME IN EVERY OTHER WAY.
We come here to our second aspect.
We noted that the word for “daily” speaks about receiving what we need for the coming day.
We can think here of the Old Testament story of when the Israelites were travelling through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land.
The LORD taught them then the same prayer, because when he gave them manna in the wilderness - that special light bread which they found in the morning when they woke - he told them to take just enough for that day.
The only exception was the day before the Sabbath, when the Lord allowed them to collect enough for two days and he preserved it for them.
If they tried to gather up too much, and store it away, it went bad and rotten.
They had to be satisfied with just enough.
Just enough for today!
Congregation, this request tells us to live only one day at a time.
To think or say or act differently isn’t praying this prayer.
And it’s this very prayer which we seem to be lacking in our western world.
This is what a medical doctor noticed when he returned to his western country after having served more than six years in a desperately poor African country.
All he could see his friends being interested in was the size of their superannuation packages and their planned holidays for when they retired in twenty years or so.
But they weren’t living life to the full right now.
That’s why the word “this day” in the text means exactly that - today!
Away with all those worries about the future!
The same God who created each day will give you what you need when he makes that day!
Our Lord Jesus goes on about this in some length later in this chapter 6 of Matthew.
He calls out to us verse 27, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”
But I’ll tell you what, congregation, we can certainly waste hours and days and weeks and months and even years by this worry!
That’s subtracting - the very opposite of adding!
This is why Jesus goes on to put our focus exactly where it should be - on God.
He goes on to say in verse 33, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
These are … THE BLESSINGS WHICH COME TODAY IN EVERY OTHER WAY.
This is going to come as we live this prayer.
There is a story told of a man who had an allotment - a piece of ground that was given to you for a garden.
With a lot of hard work he had reclaimed that ground, clearing away the rocks and rubbish, getting rid of all those weeds, watering and fertilising, until it produced the most beautiful flowers and big, healthy vegetables.
One evening he was showing a pious friend around his section.
That friend, who liked to be so spiritual said, “Isn’t it great what God can do with a piece of ground like this?”
“Yes,” said the man who had put in so much hard work, “but you should have seen this when God had it to himself!”
God’s blessing and our labour go together.
We know that without God’s blessing we can’t do a thing, but we also know that unless we’re actually doing something God can’t do anything for us either.
Asking for our daily bread also means being open to God’s will being done through us.
We realise again how we answer our own prayers firstly through ourselves.
The New Testament showed this prayer being answered.
It’s the church which is described in 1st Corinthians 10:11 as the community on which “the fulfilment of the ages has come.”
And it’s the church, which, in the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 6 verse 5, has “tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age.” (6:5)
Though the Kingdom of God hasn’t finally come, it is already here as we pray this prayer from our hearts.
And, notice, it is already here with all believers.
We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
That means, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “as we have the opportunity, let’s do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” (Gal.6:10)
The problem of the world isn’t that there is not enough food to go around - there’s more than enough!
In America granaries overflow with corn; in Australia and New Zealand too our wheat silos in some years can’t take any more.
The problem isn’t that there will be enough of what we need, it’s how we share it around.
So as we pray “our” we can’t be selfish.
It is not my daily bread – it is bread that we may be able to give to others, and that way help God to answer this prayer for others too.
While we know that Jesus doesn’t have here in mind the bread of the Lord’s Supper, that sacrament does help to show us what he means in this part of prayer.
You see, in the Lord’s Supper we receive the bread and the wine - ordinary food - but in doing so, our hearts are lifted beyond these signs to the One they represent, and so we have communion with Christ.
That’s a foretaste of our future fellowship with Him.
That is ‘tomorrow’s bread’ tasted today!
And so we have this promise of our Lord Jesus Christ to us right now: “Here I am!
“I stand at the door and knock.
“If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” (Rev.3:20)
Dear friend, at the end of the day the simple fact is that if we have all the food in the world, but no Christ, we will ultimately starve.
Remember that parable Jesus told of the rich farmer.
He was a man who so ambitiously planned to lay back and really enjoy the rest of his life, the man who was going to tear down his barns and make bigger ones - all so that he could eat, drink, and be merry!
That very night the Lord took his life.
Fat lot of use that was!
But if we have food with Christ, we’ll have all we’ll ever need.
And because we need both - the physical and the spiritual food - everyday we have to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
Heavenly Father, how good you are to us all.
You send the rain and the sun, the seed is planted, the harvest is so often plentiful, we are richly blessed.
For you do give us what we need exactly when we need it - not a day later or earlier - but right on time.
Please give us this day our daily bread - physical and spiritual - that we may have the strength to serve you and love you, as the Living Bread, Christ Jesus himself showed us.
In his precious Name we pray, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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